诗无达诂 译尽其能——评毛泽东词《沁园春·长沙》五种英译本

中国是诗词的国度,诗、词、歌、赋代代相传,诗人辈出,世代相袭。中国历代政治家几乎都能诗会文。当代伟人毛泽东的诗词风格古雅,题材广泛,内容丰富隽永,常为国人及国际友人传诵引用。毛泽东诗词早在20世纪60年代初就被译成多种外文,流传到世界各地。其英文译本几近二十余种,各家译本竞显风流。不同译本的对比研究有利于进一步提高译文质量,更加有效促进地我国文学翻译事业的健康发展。

There Is No Ultimate Authoritative Explanation for Poetry;Translators Just Do What They Think They Can

China is a nation of poetic compositions.Verses,ditties,odes and songs have been handed down from generation to generation by elites who are talented in prosodic writing.Nearly every Chinese emperor or king could compose poems or artistic prose in the ancient history of China.Mao Tse-tung,the late Chairman of the People's Republic of China,was an expert in poetry.His poems are classical in style and with resourceful subject matters and are extremely rich in their sense,so that some of them have been recited or quoted both at home and abroad.His verses and ditties were translated into various foreign languages in the early 1960's and are spread over the world.There are about 20 English versions of Mao's poems and ditties and each of them displays its merits.A contrasting study of different English versions,therefore,is conducive to promoting the quality of translation and gearing the literary translation towards a healthier course.